French Melodrama at Quad Cinema

Image: "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" directed by Jacques Demy

The Quad is starting a special partnership with the famed Cinémathèque Française. Through this collaboration, they will periodically host the Cinémathèque’s curatorial vision, customized for the Quad to give New Yorkers a taste of Parisian programming.

Although melodrama’s roots date back to 18th-century theater, 200 years on, the movies would become the form’s natural home: it thrived and adapted to the big screen with stage transfers, film versions of incident-packed novels, and original screenplays. French filmmakers took to the genre with particular gusto, and took seriously the potential of combining cinema and melodrama for viewer identification. The Quad has saved you a seat to settle in as some of France’s finest auteurs and actors seek to make your cheeks flush, your heart beat faster, and your mind race; voilà, les mélos.